Local Sustainable Homes – Book Review

Local Sustainable Homes: How to Make Them Happen in Your Community, by Chris Bird Transition Books (2010) £14.95, paperback, 240pp, ISBN 978 1 900322 768; Kindle edition also available. (This review is also available in PDF format - see attachment at end of review) The localist road to sustainability If you want to know what localism might look like translated into actual housing projects, then this book gives you all the practical examples you could possibly hope for. Chris Bird’s book is a product of the burgeoning Transition movement, whose programme is built on the premise that the impending catastrophe for our current way of life is not climate change but “peak oil”. In short, fossil fuels are rapidly running out whilst demand is accelerating with urbanisation and development across the planet; this is unsustainable and our oil-based civilization is simply going to have to change, like it or not, to a radically different alternative, based on a localism that is not merely political but economic. Apocalypse Now There is an apocalyptic dimension to all this, which becomes apparent in the book’s final chapter where Bird looks into the future, writing from the perspective of a 2030 “afterword”. Of Sheffield in 2030 he writes that the city has had “a traumatic few years after the first oil collapse and before the exodus. But life here is better now and the population of 200,000 is settled and confident about the future….With so many abandoned homes, Sheffield is a major source for reclaimed building materials. Bricks from older buildings built with lime and mortar are easily recovered and transported to rural areas by canal boats…Glazing, pipework and roofing materials are all carefully gleaned as entire neighbourhoods are harvested of construction materials and then rehabilitated for cultivation”. The apocalypse has, it seems, helped change the world for the better. This is a world where much of the population live in eco-hamlets growing their own food, which is presumably where the 350,000 odd people no longer living in Sheffield[1] have gone following the “exodus” Meanwhile, in a terraced street in Brighton “sections of tarmac and pavement on one side of the street were dug up by residents and planted with trees and bushes. Apricots, peaches, almonds and walnuts mingle with apples, pears and plums, and grape vines climb terraces on south-facing walls. This street has a wine and cider collective and the vines also shade the buildings and prevent overheating”. Before we dismiss the Transition view of history out-of-hand it is worth bearing in mind that in Detroit, following the decline of the car manufacturing industry and a population reduced from 1.8million to 900,000, they are talking about a rather more brutal version of exactly what Bird is prophesying for Sheffield. The Observer newspaper reported that “Detroit mayor Dave Bing is currently working on a blueprint for the city's future, to be announced in the next 18 months, which is expected to involve concentrating Detroit's remaining residents within still-viable areas and abandoning neighbourhoods that are considered past the point of no return.” A major component of such plans is likely to be urban farming.[2] This vision of a utopian future born out of an impending cataclysm of history reminds me of Marxist views about socialist revolution. This was expected to arise inevitably from the internal dynamics of capitalism which would pauperise the masses. Writing in 1939, Leon Trotsky noted that “the history of the capitalist world since the last war has irrefutably borne out the so-called ‘theory of increasing misery.’”[3] People, it seems, need the opium of historical inevitability to compensate for the uncertainties and disappointments of their day-to-day struggles. Of course the Transition movement bases its analysis on a completely different set of factors from old-style socialism and there can be no doubt that fossil fuels are finite. Whilst my own view is that—regrettably—capitalism will prove capable of using its technological prowess to secure alternative energy sources, fending off utopia for a couple more centuries, this does not strike me as a foregone conclusion. The journey is likely to be a painful one that will throw up new political forces: the perspective of the Transition movement does need to be taken seriously and its proposals must surely rise up the agenda regardless of the eventual scale of success. Moreover, the Transition movement—and Local Sustainable Homes—are less about promoting future utopias and more about showing what can be done here and now, developing templates that a future, more enlightened society can adopt. Sustainable communities, sustainable homes What Bird does, admirably, in this book is document the many forms that local action has taken to produce sustainable buildings and—perhaps more importantly—sustainable communities. This is not a “how-to-do-it” book for self-builders looking to green their homes but a guide that shows how people can organise themselves to achieve change, how new ideas can be shared and new possibilities realised. This is reflected in the overall framework of the book which interleaves chapters on themes such as “Refurbishment and retrofit” and “New build” with chapters showing how community engagement laid the foundations for success in particular places such as Stroud, Totnes and Brighton. The human value of communities is recognised, too: they are not just a means to an end but a valuable end in themselves, capable of providing the mutual support and social interaction that we all need. At the same time, the material outcomes are well-described too and copiously illustrated, so that you are left in no doubt as to what can be achieved even today: co-housing projects that grow some of their own food and save precious resources by sharing facilities; new homes built to high standards from low-tech, locally-sourced materials that also have low embodied energy; self-build projects; community land trust schemes– they are all documented here. Utopia would actually be well within our grasp were it not for the massive weight of vested interests driving us down a different track. Where case studies are concerned we can be particularly grateful to Bird for presenting them not just in some detail but also warts-and-all, rather than giving us the air-brushed versions that we tend to get in governmental “best-practice” documents. He points out where trade-offs and compromises have occurred and why—and how they might be avoided. He’s good at registering affordability issues, flagging up this downside to some of the more prestigious eco-housing schemes. Empty homes Whilst refurbishment obviously tends to crop up throughout, there is a separate chapter on empty homes taking its title from the Empty Homes study “New tricks with old bricks”. This covers such obvious issues as the potential for conversion of existing buildings, the importance of taking into account the embodied energy found in existing buildings and the positive aspects of squatting. The longest and most interesting section here is the review of the Pathfinder Housing Market Renewal programme. The famous Urban Splash Chimney Pot Park project in Salford receives short shrift not only as being unaffordable for the majority of the displaced community but as a project lacking in transparency. But again, there is no sense that Bird is being dogmatic here: his analysis derives from an in-depth investigation by the Salford Star which in turn paid close regard to the views of local residents. And the vision of the future of Sheffield, spelled out above, shows he is not wedded to retaining existing housing at all costs. The key issue for him is that any regeneration should be rooted in the wishes of the local community rather than imposed from above as a form of social engineering. The disparity between VAT on new-build and refurbishment gets its inevitable mention as does the reduced rate of VAT on homes empty for two years. The counter-intuitive aspect of giving a tax-break to people who keep homes empty is not remarked upon. With VAT at 20%, the advantages of keeping a home empty for 2 years if it needs substantial refurbishment are becoming all too compelling. It would save £7,500 on a works cost of £50,000 to keep the home empty for two years. That wouldn’t offset the loss of income but it would certainly offset expenses such as council tax and insurance. Either there should be a reduced rate of VAT for repairs across the board or, even better, VAT should be reduced ONLY for occupied homes or ones empty LESS than a year. That would incentivise people to bring their homes back into use more quickly not more slowly. No doubt because of his in-principle opposition to VAT in the first place, Bird has not picked up on the issue of how VAT affects value-for-money of social housing grant bids and the need to create a level playing field by knocking off the Treasury’s VAT receipts when calculating public subsidy. That is an option that could be—that must be—implemented without requiring any change to the VAT regime. The wide territory covered is indicated by some of the other chapter headings which include “Materials and skills”, “Social housing” and “Land, planning permission and finance”. Again, it is to Bird’s credit that he seems to know what he is talking about across this range of material. There are some minor quibbles, for example when discussing the zero-rating of refurbishment costs incurred on homes empty for over 10 years he mentions that this applies only to materials for self-builders or “possibly where the resulting home is purchased by a social housing provider”. This is true, but any sale of the home would be zero-rated meaning that input VAT could be reclaimed by a VAT-registered developer (though that is not much use to self-builders). Programmes and practicalities If the book falls down anywhere it is not because it has its head in the clouds—far from it. But it would have been nice if the solid grounding in practicalities had been complemented by a more programmatic element, spelling out realistic actions and policies that central government could contribute. For whilst nearly all the projects described are inspiring in different ways, there is a constant refrain of progress being slow and agonisingly hard-won against the dead-weight of existing arrangements. This hard work may be good for the soul but it probably ends up destroying more communities than it helps build. Grant Shapps’s recent announcement of support for self-builders, for example, is a welcome move in the right direction but it needs to form part of a much more coherent plan to build sustainable alternatives. What about those other self-builders ie. homesteaders? We are currently debating what might or might not happen to the measly £100million that has been allocated to empty homes (over four years) from the affordable housing programme. What we really need—as do so many of the projects in Local Sustainable Homes—is access to reasonably-priced loan facilities. Most investment in bricks and mortar is actually fairly secure unless based on absurdly inflated values. Kent has shown the potential with its loan scheme. So why is it that we can lend £7billion to Ireland to help bail out its banks but there is not a hint of any innovative loan funding being set up to support such obvious objectives as bringing empty homes back into use, preferably refurbishing them to high environmental standards in the process? Having said that, it isn’t entirely fair to criticise the book for failing to cover territory it never set out to cover. In reality, it does exactly what it says on the tin, or more accurately, in the sub-title “How to make them happen in your community”. It is beautifully-produced and intelligently designed, integrating images, case studies and main text in a way that keeps you interested as well as informed. If you want to get to grips with what community-oriented housing projects are about, to get a feel for what sustainability means in practice beyond the technicalities of the Code for Sustainable Homes, about how localism might play out in the housing field, you should buy it. Then give it to someone else. But don’t forget to ask for it back – you might well need it. David Gibbens Further reading Other titles from Transition Books are well worth reading and give a fuller picture of what the movement is about. The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins and Communities, Councils and a Low-Carbon Future by Alexis Rowell stand out. For further information refer to the Transition Books website. Notes:
1 Sheffield City Council’s website states that “since the 2001 Census, the population has increased to the current estimate for mid-2008 of 547,000.”
2 see http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/04/marxism.htm
3 see http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/11/detroit-urban-renewal-city-farms-paul-harris, http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/05/29-2.